that happy time when we
shall sit round the table a Jack Straw's--you, and I, and Mac--and go
over my diary. I never shall be able to dismiss from my mind the
impressions of that day. Making notes of them, as I have done, is an
absurdity, for they are written, beyond all power of erasure, in my
brain. I saw men who had been there, five years, six years, eleven
years, two years, two months, two days; some whose term was nearly over,
and some whose term had only just begun. Women too, under the same
variety of circumstances. Every prisoner who comes into the jail comes
at night; is put into a bath, and dressed in the prison-garb; and then a
black hood is drawn over his face and head, and he is led to the cell
from which he never stirs again until his whole period of confinement
has expired. I looked at some of them with the same awe as I should have
looked at men who had been buried alive and dug up again.

"We dined in the jail: and I told them after dinner how much the sight
had affected me, and what an awful punishment it was. I dwelt upon this;
for, although the inspectors are extremely kind and benevolent men, I
question whether they are sufficiently acquainted with the human mind to
know what it is they are doing. Indeed, I am sure they do not know. I
bore testimony, as every one who sees it must, to the admirable
government of the institution (Stanfield is the keeper: grown a little
younger, that's all); but added that nothing could justify such a
punishment but its working a reformation in the prisoners. That for
short terms--say two years for the maximum--I conceived, especially
after what they had told me of its good effects in certain cases, it
might perhaps be highly beneficial; but that, carried to so great an
extent, I thought it cruel and unjustifiable; and, further, that their
sentences for small offenses were very rigorous, not to say savage. All
this they took like men who were really anxious to have one's free
opinion and to do right. And we were very much pleased with each other,
and parted in the friendliest way.

"They sent me back to Philadelphia in a carriage they had sent for me in
the morning; and then I had to dress in a hurry, and follow Kate to
Carey's the bookseller's, where there was a party. He married a sister
of Leslie's. There are three Miss Leslies here, very accomplished; and
one of them has copied all her brother's principal pictures. These
copies hang about the room. We got away fr